As Los Angeles County braces for nearly $2billion in state cuts, an audit released Monday found the Probation Department exceeded its overtime budget by an average of 126percent over the past five years.

Among the startling findings, the audit said some employees hold contests to see who can work the most overtime and engage in “shopping for overtime.” The vast majority of those audited worked more overtime than the county allows, it found.

“We are definitely not happy to see overtime being used this way,” Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe said. “I know they have a difficult task because of the size of the department, but especially with this economy and funding dwindling everywhere, we really need to have much better controls over overtime.”

Probation Department Chief Robert Taylor said he’s already taken action on 11 of the audit’s 41 recommendations.

“We are watching the overtime expenditures and we’re having regular discussions with the bureau chiefs to make sure their overtime use isn’t out of line,” Taylor said.

The audit comes as the governor is considering releasing up to 35,000 inmates from state prisons, including about 12,000 to the county.

The proposal is part of the governor’s plan to close the state’s $24billion budget deficit.

Taylor said the action would have a severe impact on his department, which already oversees 20,000 youth and 62,000 adults on probation. The department employs 6,200 employees who also oversee 1,515 youths in three juvenile halls and 1,650 in 18 probation camps.

“They want to release some of their minor offenders to the county so presumably those people would be referred to county jails and some, of course, would be placed on probation and would be supervised locally,” Taylor said.

The audit, one in a series that has examined overtime abuses in various county departments in recent years, found the 6,400-member department exceeded its overtime by an average of $9.8million over the last five fiscal years.

Under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, Taylor said he has to maintain certain staffing levels, which required employees to work overtime.

“Initially, there was a great deal of panic in trying to staff the juvenile halls and satisfy the DOJ, but we have controls in place now and we are closely monitoring that overtime,” Taylor said.

The department spends about $1million a month on overtime at the juvenile halls. State regulations require specific ratios of staff to youth at the halls. Probation officials told auditors most of the overtime is due to staff shortages.

But auditors noted that while the department increased the number of probation officers at the halls by more than 170 from July 2007 to May 2008, overtime still increased from $1.14million to $1.28million, even though the number of youths in the halls remained unchanged.

In reviewing the overtime records of 21 employees, auditors found 86percent of them exceeded the department’s overtime limits of 24 hours in seven consecutive days, and 10 employees worked more than 1,000 hours of overtime in a year. These 21 employees earned an average of $42,600 in overtime in 2007.

Some employees told auditors that they reported to locations other than their usual work location on days off to ask if overtime was available, a practice known as “shopping for overtime.” That practice is prohibited without a supervisor’s consent.

“One employee indicated that he and his co-workers also hold competitions to determine who can work the most overtime,” auditors wrote. “Another employee indicated that he works a significant amount of overtime so he can purchase a home.”

A number of employees worked excessive overtime. One employee worked 220 hours of overtime a month for five months. That employee worked 72 consecutive days during this period without a day off.

Throughout the department, 366 employees worked more than 300 overtime hours during the July 2007 to May 2008 review period. Of these, 82 employees worked more than 600 hours of overtime and 10 employees worked more than 1,000 hours of overtime, the equivalent of six months of full-time work.

In response to the audit, Supervisor Mike Antonovich plans to ask his fellow supervisors to vote today to ask Taylor for a report explaining the lack of basic protocols such as proper overtime documentation.

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